The çaydanlık never rests
People ask why I always have tea on. The answer is a stacked Turkish teapot, the çaydanlık: water boils in the bottom pot while strong black tea steeps slowly in the top. You pour a little of the dark tea into a tulip glass, then cut it with hot water until it's the color the guest wants. Rabbit's blood, my grandmother called the perfect shade. Deep red, and you can see through it.
In my family we say a guest is God's guest. So the tea is never really for me. It's for whoever might knock. Brewing it is a small dhikr: the kettle hums, I remember, I wait.
Come by. There are sugar cubes, and I'll pretend not to count how many you take.
My father's tesbih
Baba is ill in Istanbul, the slow kind of ill that makes a son on another continent feel useless. Last night we were on a video call and he was too tired to talk, so he said, 'Then let's just do dhikr.'
So we did. Him in his chair by the window in Kadıköy, me at my kitchen table in Chicago, each with a tesbih of thirty-three beads. La ilaha illallah, over and over, his voice a little behind mine because of the delay.
We said nothing else for twenty minutes. I have never felt closer to him. Please keep him in your prayers, whatever shape your prayers take.
Turkish tea takes about fifteen minutes in the çaydanlık: water boiling below, leaves steeping above. For years I scrolled through those fifteen minutes. Now they belong to dhikr.
La ilaha illallah, on the out-breath and the in-breath, while the steam rises. Nothing dramatic happens. No visions, no whirling. Just the kettle, the window going dark over the Chicago rooftops, and the slow return of the heart to where it was always meant to face.
The masters say remembrance polishes the mirror of the heart. Mine has a lot of fingerprints. Fifteen minutes at a time, then. Tea's ready. Come sit.